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thinking of raising briareus

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Vampyroteuthis

Hi everyone, well Tom from Tom's Caribbeans has a briareus female that has eggs. Originally i instantly said no, but now i am thinking maybe i should try rearing the babies. Since Tom lives close to me i could meet up with him and avoid shipping.
If i do raise them successfully then i would sell the babies on here for no profit, just as much as is needed to cover the cost of food and shipping.
Now to the real questions. From what i've read i would need to feed them mysis or amphipods. Is this correct?
If so, were can i get these cheaply?.
Also, i live close to the ocean, so does anyone know where and how i could collect food myself, since this would bring the cost of keeping and raising them down by a lot.
Thanks in Advance :)

Cthulhu

I'm expecting that SueNami is a mated female but hoping to be way behind you so keep a very detailed journal!!! I would pickup a bar of Cyclop-eeze to keep in the freezer for supplement or days when food is a problem. The mercs got it with every meal and the original mom lived much longer than normal after the brood hatched (her daughter mated a second time and went into brooding behind the tank. I THINK I know where she was and about the time the eggs (there were not likely any) would have hatched, I saw a shell drop from the suspected chamber. That would have put her a month past egg hatch if 2+2 = 4 on second guessing. I don't know that the Cyclop-eeze was responsible at all but it is a good baby food if they eat it.

Titanites

I raised a briareus to over four months in a tank stocked with mysis and with its own large supply of amphipods. There were also crabs including very small ones. So it is possible with mysids and amphipods, then moving onto crabs.

Cthulhu

I will make a suggestion based on my own vicarious experience with Joe and Connanny's babies and is what I plan to do if SueNami has young. Prepare containers for single individuals (I am thinking somewhere between 5 and 10) and isolate them before they are a week old. The rest leave in the tank and try not to be to upset with what happens. Joe's tank was saturated with live food (from his backdoor biou ;>). Just before we arrived (roughly 2 weeks after they hatched) the ones in his very large tank (my guess is 160 - 200 gallons) started dieing off in droves. Each had little damaged places in their mantles and we could see damage on many live ones in the tank. Joe thought this started about 3 days before we arrived. He gave us the ones he had isolated (that did not make the trip home sadly) and put others into isolation. None of the babies survived.

The mercs are much easier to raise but, for whatever reason (they don't appear to attack each other) IME only 5-6 grow into adults. The odd thing is that this has been the case with both Greg's and my rearing attempts with a highly differing numbers of hatchlings. Second guessing, based solely on the fact that Trapper had only 6 young (odd in itself so I am wondering if she laid eggs and then moved before finishing the egg laying when I offered a better den - odd in itself and may be way off-base), I would go for the last of the hatching rather than the first. My strategy will be to try to separate the young and capture and replace the ones I isolate each day of the hatching. It won't be easy but the design of SueNami's tank makes it slightly feasible if I point the Koralias toward the non-brood side at night and place a screen over the tubes durning the day. At least this is what I have come up with so far

Titanites

I can't say for certain, but the mysids, at least the ones I used, were much smaller than the amphipods and provided food for the very young hatchlings. This was the sequence used at the NRCC for raising bimacs: mysids, amphipods, then on to small crabs and shrimp.

Chris Shaw observed some time ago that bristle worms can damage hatchlings by grabbing the food they've captured and taking an arm or two with the food. I saw evidence of this myself.

Vampyroteuthis

Ok, Tom responded and im getting the eggs sometime soon for 20 bucks. I plan to artificially hatch them using an airstone (like it says here)
Then i will feed them mysis at first and slowly introduce amphipods (which i will culture at home and collect at the beach)
I plan to raise a few (15-20) in breeder nets with 2-3 per net and the rest i will leave in a tank with live rock and amphipods and mysis.
Does this all sound good? Please tell me if i am missing anything.
Thanks.
Also, does anyone have an estimate as to how long they will need to be fed mysis before i can use amphipods?

Cuttlefish

interesting. I agreed to buy the mama octo with her eggs from Tom yesterday, I bet you're getting some of the eggs. We will have to keep in touch and share tips etc! I have also ordered mysids, amphipods and fiddlers to start propagating for food.

Vampyroteuthis

oh that is weird. I guess more money for him then. Hopefully artificially hatching them will work well. Did you get your mysis from Sachs Aquaculture, or have you found a cheaper source? I really hope that they don't need the mysis for too long since that would save me a ton of money. Also, how are you setting up the tanks in which you will hatch them, grow them out etc.?
When are you getting the eggs?
Thanks.

Titanites

There is a TFH book that came out just before our Cephalopods book: Culturing Live Foods, by Michael R. Hellweg.

He does cover mysids and amphipods. In short, mysids are difficult to culture and require cold water, and amphipods are much easier to culture, but take two or three months until you can harvest the extra.

Vampyroteuthis

I plan on ordering mysids from Sachs Aquaculture, as well as some amphipods. I will also try to collect my own hopefully this week. There should be plenty near a beach/ lagoon thats 10 min. from my house and has a ton of mangroves, macroalgae and mud, so i will try to go there and if i cant find any there, ill take a drive down to the keys, where there will be some for sure.
Can anyone come up with an estimate as to how long the hatchlings will need to feed on mysids before they can eat amphipods?
Also, as a side note, i was looking at joefish's thread in which he attempted to raise briareus and he never states why the young died. Does anyone know why this occurred?
Thanks

Cuttlefish

oh that is weird. I guess more money for him then. Hopefully artificially hatching them will work well. Did you get your mysis from Sachs Aquaculture, or have you found a cheaper source? I really hope that they don't need the mysis for too long since that would save me a ton of money. Also, how are you setting up the tanks in which you will hatch them, grow them out etc.?
When are you getting the eggs?
Thanks.

yes, I got mysids from Sachs. And since I hadn't really planned on hatching eggs, I don't have seperate containers set up yet.(haven't even figured out that part yet) Tom was supposed to e-mail me an invoice today but didn't. Hopefully he will tomorrow. I have a tank set up for an octo, and three for food critters. Any ideas on how to make seperate compartments/containers?

Cthulhu

Simple,
You might consider a couple of nets with JUST 1. The predation was very heavy once it started with Conanny's offspring. I know Joe was going to pull out a few more for separation after he gave us the ones he had kept in a separate aquarium but I don't know if he kept even these as individuals. Joe's tank is very large but the babies found and mauled each other very early.

I am about to inherit a 65 from my son so we are going to replace Octane's tank with the larger one (another tank to take care of I don't need!) and likely use it for SueNami's offspring if they happen (unless a concurrent hummelincki detours the plan but even that will likely work out OK after SueNami is gone) so I will be anxious for recordings of successes and failures from both you and Mr. Blobby.

Vampyroteuthis

Yea after reading Joefish's experience with predation i think ill try separating maybe around 20 or so individually; if i have space i will do more; because he did describe the holes in the mantle which seem to show that they were killing each other. I will probably get the eggs on thursday; I will try to go collect food today and see what i can get..

Cuttlefish

I wonder if perhaps separating them in such a way that they cannot see each other will decrease stress? Sounds impossible tho. I was considering possibly using those little plastic fish brooder boxes and putting black plastic on the sides facing others. But I'm afraid the flow thru those things may not be adequate. Also, can someone tell me approx how long the female will live after spawning? Until the eggs hatch?

Vampyroteuthis

I plan on perhaps using dixie cups with netting over them; that way they wont see each other and it'll be fairly cheap as well. The important thing isn't so much the flow but the oxygenation of the water; at least thats what it seems from what i've read. Alright well i'm off to go collect amphipods; wish me luck.

Cuttlefish

I was thinking in terms of consistent, fresh water(uh, fresh...salt...water)with the flow part. I will probably go with breeder nets, but check out PennPlax's Betta Condo (google it). Also, what do people (anyone) think about if coral supplements are taken up by/or affect octos/eggs?